Change the layout or style of a chart

After you create a chart, you can instantly change its look. Instead of manually adding or changing chart elements or formatting the chart, you can quickly apply a predefined layout and style to your chart. Microsoft Office Excel provides a variety of useful predefined layouts and styles (or quick layouts and quick styles) that you can select from. However, you can customize a layout or style of a chart further by manually changing the layout and style of the individual chart elements that are used in the chart.

You cannot save a custom layout or format, but if you want to use the same layout or format again, you can save the chart as a chart template.

Important: To complete the following procedures, you must have an existing chart. For more information about how to create a chart, see Create a chart.

Select a predefined chart style

This displays the Chart Tools, adding the Design, Layout, and Format tabs.

On the Design tab, in the Chart Styles group, click the chart style that you want to use.

To see all predefined chart styles, click More
.

Note: When the Excel window is reduced in size, chart styles will be available in the Chart Quick Styles gallery in the Chart Styles group.

Tip: Chart styles use the colors of the current document theme that is applied to the workbook. You can change the colors by switching to a different document theme. You can also customize a document them to display a chart in the exact colors that you want. For more information see Apply, customize, and save a document theme in Word or Excel.

Change the layout of chart elements manually

Click the chart, or do the following to select the chart element for which you want to change the layout from a list of chart elements:

Click a chart.

This displays the Chart Tools, adding the Design, Layout, and Format tabs.

On the Format tab, in the Current Selection group, click the arrow next to the Chart Elements box, and then click the chart element that you want.

On the Layout tab, do the one or more of the following:

In the Labels group, click the label layout option that you want.

In the Axes group, click the axis or gridline option that you want.

In the Background group, click the layout option that you want.

Note: The layout options that you select are applied to the element that you have selected. For example, if you have the whole chart selected, data labels will be applied to all data series. If you have a single data point selected, data labels will only be applied to the selected data series or data point.

A chart template contains chart formatting and stores the colors that are in use when you save the chart as a template. When you use a chart template to create a chart in another workbook, the new chart uses the colors of the chart template — not the colors of the document theme that is currently applied to the workbook. To use the document theme colors instead of the chart template colors, right-click the chart area, and then click Reset to Match Style on the shortcut menu.